


bouncing off the exit signs

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergent, Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 00:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6681259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following Daisy's warning, Fitz and Jemma ditch SHIELD in order to save themselves from possible death. What happens after that is inevitable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bouncing off the exit signs

**Author's Note:**

> For Jen, as a much belated bday gift, because I kept trying to write FS and getting stuck and then this episode happened, and I just had to sit down and write. Not beta'd because its 11pm and I need to sleep, forgive me?

He doesn’t mention it right away. There’s no time to, not when they’re giving into the inevitability of it all, falling together like two pieces of a puzzle that had always meant to align. He meants to say something, had intended to the second he walked into the door, but Jemma was there- 

Jemma has always been there, he realizes this now.

Though never quite in this way. 

Never surging up underneath him with a desperation, that comes from living their lives such that an moment could be their last. Not kissing him, open mouthed and breathless as if there’s nothing she would rather do. No bare flesh had ever shivering under his palms before. 

If he were anyone else, this would’ve been the moment he realized he was in love with her, but Fitz had known for a what felt like lifetime. He had known since he first laid eyes on Jemma Simmons, years ago at the academy. 

He would do anything for her.

He would die for her, if that’s what it took.

It’s that realization that hits him, laying there in the afterglow, the warning that had been passed along to him by Daisy coming back to the forefront of his mind in an instant.

As much as he would liked to have laid there with her until time stood still, there was something he had to do to keep her safe.

“Jemma, you trust me, yeah?”

Her reply is delayed, voice breathless, “Of course, I do. Why would you ask that?”

“Remember when I was talking about-” He makes a vague noise, tossing out his metaphors, because Jemma always say through them anyways. “We need to leave SHIELD.”

This gets her attention.

He watches as she rises up, the sheet clutched to her bare chest. She’s beautiful, it isn’t even fair. 

“Fitz, what are you talking about?”

**

They steal a car.

Or more precisely, Jemma Simmons steals a car, while Fitz watches in vague awe as she presses two wires together like someone who has done this plenty of times before. Fitz is pretty sure they didn’t teach hotwiring at the Academy, at least, not the branch that they went into.

“I thought I was supposed to be the engineer.” 

Jemma’s laugh is a wonderful thing, light and airy, echoed by the rumbling of an engine. She sits up, taking the driver’s seat with a no nonsense attitude. “Oh Fitz.” 

“I’m just saying.”

“Hunter taught me, said it might come in handy some day.” 

He’s hit briefly with a sense of longing. He misses them, has been missing them since Russia, and now they were the ones leaving. For a moment, he almost changes his mind. His hand hesitating against the car door. 

Would the others miss them? Or would they feel abandoned, left in their time of need? Left when one of them was fated to die?

When Jemma turns to look at him, the evening lights shining off her still slightly mussed hair, his decision is made for him.

He has to save her. There’s no other option.

**

Stealing a plane is harder than stealing a car, which means they move slow. 

Slow is something Fitz finds that he could get used to. Idle kisses in the backseat of their stolen car, idyllic countrysides, music on the radio that he couldn’t understand no matter how hard he tried. 

They have their forged SHIELD paperwork, though they ditched their phones a while back. Fake identities making it easier to slip away unnoticed. 

Jemma takes them South, to Greece. 

“I’ve always wanted to visit here. Though I suppose everyone says that,” there’s mirth in Jemma’s voice. He watches her, caught by the most beautiful sight in the world. Jemma Simmons standing in the ruins of some city he has already gotten the name of. 

They call this a vacation to anyone who asks. Jemma’s time undercover in Hydra having made her a convincing liar, while Fitz affects a variety of accents for each new tour guide. 

He’s stretching his  _ ahh _ ’s with a fake Boston accent when he replies, “Never would’ve picked it myself.” 

“Where would you have picked then?”

He shrugs, looking out on the ruins around them.

He already knows his answer -  _ anywhere with you  _ \- it would be so simply to say. The sort of romantic thing that a girl like Jemma deserves to hear, but that he would execute with all the grace of a dying seal. 

So instead he says the first city that comes to mind. “Barcelona?”

He should’ve been expecting the curious look on her face, before she asked, “Why?’

After all, scientists were always asking  _ why _ .

**

“Tell me how it works,” he asks of her, standing in the CosmoCaxia, watching the wonder in Jemma’s eyes at the  _ science  _ all around them. It had been the indoor rain forest that finally did her in. When she had turned to him and claimed to finally understand why he had picked  _ this  _ city.

As she begins to speak, he imagines a different life for them.

Where neither of them had become SHIELD agents.

Maybe they would’ve met in a place like this, their love for science driving them to explore museums around the world. Bumping shoulders in an exhibit hall, an awkward hello, at an accidental disturbance.

Or maybe it would’ve been at a conference. He could imagine Jemma as a lecturer. He would’ve been bored by the social events, desperate to escape his colleagues, slipping into the first open hall and finding  _ her  _ at the podium. 

Or maybe even - 

“Fitz are you listening to me?”

He can feel the heat rising up his cheeks, embarrassed ever now, no matter how much time has passed between them. “Sorry, got distracted.”

“By something more important that the ecological structure of a swamp?”

“By you,” he corrects.

He kisses her there, in that museum, pressing her back against the glass walls, desperate to hold onto what little he has left in this world. 

When a guard comes to kick them out a few minutes later, he can’t find it in himself to be disappointed.

“There’s always other museums.”

“Oh yes,” Jemma agrees sitting on the steps outside, “Tell me Doctor Fitz, how do you feel about art?”

“Well, Doctor Simmons,” he replies, lips quirking up into a teasing smile, “I’ve got the best piece art in the world right here.” 

“Let me guess, that postcard you bought earlier? A shiny rock?” 

She knows his jokes too well. 

Then again, she knows everything about him.

**

There’s no way to get back into contact with SHIELD, no easy way at least, and he doesn’t want to risk it. Not when he doesn’t know for sure.

Still there are nights when it plagues him, when their vacation has gone on too long, and he lays there staring at the ceiling while drawing circles with his thumbs on the bare flesh of Jemma’s shoulder. 

Much like Schrodinger’s Cat. 

His throat feels tight with a phantom touch.

He writes a postcard out to them in Barcelona. 

Another in France.

A third in Berlin.

He doesn’t send them, doesn’t know where he would send them too. In each one he writers the same words, a quiet entreaty, begging for answers he’ll never get. 

_ I hope we see each other again _ . 

Jemma doesn’t ask, when he hides another postcard away. Instead she just squeezes his shoulder, soft enough to be comforting, reminding him that he’s still alive. 

**

He’ll hang them up later, covering the fridge in their Perthshire home, a list of places they’ve been and places they left behind.

It will be sitting there, after the days have blending into weeks, the weeks into months, and the months into years - that he will tell it all over a cup of tea. What happened when Jemma left the room, the way Daisy had looked as she told him that she was happy now, that she didn’t want to lose either of them.

When he’s finished, she doesn’t ask him why he wouldn’t tell her before. Why he asked her to give up the life she had built for herself going off nothing more than trust. 

Instead, she simply says, “Well, the world hasn’t ended yet.”

 


End file.
